


Gladly Beyond

by gloss



Category: due South
Genre: Arctic, M/M, Nunavut, north of 40, obligatory post-CotW fic, yet another fic titled after that cummings poem I am so sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-08
Updated: 2005-08-08
Packaged: 2017-10-29 11:30:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/319411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Up here," Fraser had said, a long time ago now, before they even caught Muldoon, "you have to listen to me."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gladly Beyond

*

"Up here," Fraser had said, a long time ago now, before they even caught Muldoon, "you have to listen to me."

"Sure thing," Ray had replied. Humor the nice Mountie, that was the plan. "Of course, Fraser."

Fraser grasped him by the shoulders and brought Ray very close, almost nose to nose. "Listen to me, Ray."

"I'm listening," Ray said. He waited for more, for what he was supposed to learn, but Fraser just *looked* at him, like he was a piece of evidence he was thinking about licking.

"That's all." Fraser released Ray's shoulders and took a step back, nodding once to himself. Ray still felt the grip of Fraser's hands, wide and warm. "This is an unfriendly place if you're not used to it."

"And if you are?" Ray asked. He wanted to rub at his shoulders - not to get *rid* of the warmth but instead to rub it in deeper, like Icy Hot, but he balled his hands into fists and tried to stay still. "Used to it, I mean. What is it then?"

Fraser smiled. His eyes lifted up, focusing somewhere above Ray's head and very far off. "Well, then," he said quietly. Almost secretly, Ray thought. "Then, it's the most beautiful place outside Eden."

At the time, Ray wanted to laugh. *Eden?*

But he knew Fraser well enough to know that there were some things you just didn't, *ever*, laugh at. The uniform, the anthem, and, apparently, this frozen desolate eye-burning white glaring version of Eden.

"Freak," Ray said lightly and did not laugh.

Fraser winked at him. "Yes."

Now that he'd been up here for a little while, Ray was starting to see it. This place was never going to be Eden, but it was big and beautiful in its own massive, lonely way.

*

"So, dogs, huh?" Ray rolled his shoulders under the blanket and peered at Fraser across the fire. Diefenbaker lay across Ray's boots while two more dogs leaned against Ray on either side, sharing the blanket's shelter. "Nice of him to lend 'em to you.

"Us," Fraser said, stirring the stew. He said it again, savoring the pleasure of the word, attempting to ignore the accompanying spike of worry. "Us. He loaned the equipment to us."

Ray snorted. "Sure. All I mean is, hope no bad guy goes off running across the ice, otherwise old Buck's gonna be SOL. No dogs, no sled."

"The last patrol by dogsled was actually in 1969," Fraser said as he handed the bowl of stew to Ray. Though it was only slightly past four in the evening, the air around them was perfectly dark and crystalline-cold.

"The one that got caught in the mountains?" Ray slipped Diefenbaker a piece of sausage and repeated the question, as if to distract Fraser. "That sad story?"

"*Last* patrol," Fraser said. "Not the lost patrol. The last patrol travelled to Herschel Island and then back to Fort McPherson."

"Last one. Huh." Ray mechanically shoved several spoonfuls into his mouth before smacking his lips and sitting a little way back. "Til now, right?"

Fraser tugged the double-layered tarp over the komatik and said, as carefully as he could, "We aren't *patrolling*, so much as we are --"

Grinning, Ray shook his spoon at Fraser, stabbing it into the air. "Adventuring."

"Yes."

*

At some point, sooner rather than later, Fraser needed to tell Ray that what they were doing was wrong.

Or, if not wrong, then -- in a word -- misguided.

Ray had been nearly mad with hypothermia in that crevasse. His face was chalky, his usual loquacity had slowed to near-nonsense, his sharp eyes were dulled with fear and cold. Their feet dangled helplessly; a few more hours of their dwindling body heat, and the ice would have melted behind them. They would have slipped farther then, all the way down, into the black and ice.

Fraser would have agreed to just about anything to keep Ray talking. An adventure was a small promise compared to what he was willing to wager.

Fraser does not gamble. Never for money, rarely for air, and, he had assumed, no longer with his heart. Not for a long time, not since he looked at Victoria's face, lit by the aquarium glow and the shadows of polar bears in motion, and knew that he was lost.

He survived that. The diamonds scattered like broken ice as the bullet tore through his shoulder, and the agony of being shot was nothing compared to knowing he had lost but still lived. He was finished.

When the next threat came, then, down in the ice, it shocked him with its hollow force. His father was fading, the song was running into the final chorus, and Ray was dying. Fraser himself was dying; the thought was more than a mere idea, but a fact that he could taste, gunmetal slick at the back of his throat, and feel, dead flesh frozen solid.

Ray believed he was not himself without Fraser; that much was clear. The shocking part, the hollow ringing *truth*, was that Fraser was nothing, less than a ghost, without Ray.

He did not know what that meant, simply -- terribly -- that it was the truth.

When he emerged from the mineshaft the next day and turned Muldoon over to Inspector Thatcher, Fraser found Ray sitting in the snow next to the submarine.

Ray's hands were cupped on his cheeks, his elbows resting on his knees. The tears that had prickled up at the sight of his parents had long since dried to ice around Fraser's eyes, but they warmed again when he settled his hand on Ray's shoulder and Ray looked up. Up, at him, and the trust and relief on his face were nearly enough to send Fraser to his knees. Worse, to lay him out flat on his back, toppling into the slushy, depthless waters of Franklin Bay.

He steadied himself, tightening his grip on Ray, and said, "Let's go, then."

He followed his instinct. And in that moment, Fraser lost any hope he might have had of saving Ray. They set out by dogsled to Paulatuk, taking a roundabout route. They meandered both south and east along the Horton River before looping north, following the Hornady to Paulatuk.

Before he sent Ray home, Fraser wanted him to see the north up close. Moreover, it had been a long time -- since the time of his father's death, as a matter of fact -- that he had travelled with dogs. Ray learned quickly how to move through the snow and Fraser felt the leads in his gloves so familiarly, instinctually, that it was as if he had never travelled south. If he occasionally -- frequently -- found himself expecting his father to appear over his shoulder, he also had Ray at his side, and this was more consoling than Fraser could admit.

*

Ray had kind of figured that things would change once the adventure got in gear. Not the important stuff, but he *saw* that bizarre grin on Fraser's face when they landed, saw how his eyes did the little cartoon dancing lights-thing. The guy was happy. Ray knew things were different here for Fraser.

He might have worried, and he did sometimes, late when he couldn't sleep for the cold and the dark, that there wasn't any room for him up here with Fraser. Fraser needed him down in Chicago, or thought he did, which ended up being the same thing. Needed Ray for knowing who the bad guys were, where to go, all of that. Looking back, it sucked to realize that Fraser needed him down there but wasn't happy. What kind of partnership was that?

Up here, Ray's crazy head insisted on the sleepless nights, Fraser didn't need nobody.

But that was just the dark times, times that Ray knew really fucking well *already*, and he was glad that they'd shrunk down to the occasional bout of stewing and fretting in the wee hours, rather than occupying his whole entire life, like they had when Stella moved out.

The rest of the time, riding the komatik behind the dogs with Fraser behind him, Ray just felt like a goofy kid. Nothing had changed, not even when he started figuring out how to drive and switched places with Fraser.

Fraser was still, always, Fraser and if he talked less than he used to, that just made sense. Ray didn't talk so much, either.

Talking wasn't what you did outside. Out on the snow, you didn't waste your breath like that. Talking meant air, and air meant wet, and the wet froze in an instant and locked your wool to your face and it hurt like a whining bitch to pull *that* free.

They didn't *need* to talk outside. They watched each other, because you had to keep an eye on each other, and they watched Dief, and the other dogs. They communicated - all of them, him and Fraser and all the dogs - with their eyes and bodies. Not always with their eyes, because they wore goggles against the snow-glare a lot of the time, but with little bodily movements. Gestures and careful, economic motion meant everything up there - the way the dogs' ears stirred when they neared open water, how Fraser would lift his shoulder to indicate that they needed to change direction, how he'd slow his step and turn a little at the waist to make eye contact with Ray.

Even through all the layers, Ray could read exactly what Fraser meant. Maybe *because* of the layers. As they moved Gore-Tex and wool and flannel set up this constant shifting, whispering symphony that played under the wind, alongside the barks and yips from the dogs, with the hollow crunch of snow, and Ray listened hard.

Gestures up here were small but big in meaning. Just like time, really. Time was the instant it took for your cheek to freeze to your balaclava. Time was less than a moment, but it was also longer than a lifetime. Twilight lasted for a good six months at a time, after all.

They were two, almost three, weeks on the land with the dogs, but maybe it was just a day. With the dark lowering around three, four pm and lasting til eight in the morning, counting got thrown off. Like God was learning-disabled or something, messing up the arithmetic, forgetting to throw the sun up above the horizon.

Counting didn't work up here. That kind of thing, counting days, calendars and ticking clocks, just didn't matter. What mattered was that your heart kept lub-dubbing, beating along, that Fraser lifted the reins and drew the dogs to a stop, that your empty gut got filled up with stew that tasted like propane.

What mattered, then, was the little stuff. What mattered was conserving your breath, saving up your words and energy, staying warm and staying on the move.

They saved the words and breath for nighttime.

Or, honestly, what they pretended was the night, because it was always kind of dark regardless.

Fraser told stories as he built the fire -- Ray got pretty good at scavenging kindling, he wasn't completely useless -- and Ray listened hard and tried to take it all in. The dogs orbited around, shaking off the leads and chasing each other, while Dief sat next to Fraser and rolled his eyes at their antics.

Fraser's stories were -- okay, Ray might be being ungrateful here, and he didn't want to be -- but Fraser's stories were kind of odd. Really fucking strange, when you got down to it. They were great stories, that wasn't the problem. He told Ray about Albert Johnson, the Mad Trapper of Rat River, and the passage cult that sprang up around the loss of Franklin, and folktales about girls running away to marry terns and whales and dogs. In return, Ray told him stories back about the kind of stuff *he* knew -- stregas, and albino alligators in the sewers, how Shoeless Joe blackened the name of the White Sox, how the curse on the Cubs came to be. When he couldn't think of new stories, he took the adventures of the Justice League and sometimes the Fantastic Four and changed the names; he'd thought Fraser would groove on Reed Richards, but it was The Thing, in Ray's version 'The Brick', that Fraser really liked.

He was never sure if Fraser already knew these stories, but he listened like they were new to him, so that was okay. And Ray might have felt bad about stealing stories from Marvel and cartoons, but he decided that stories were stories, period, wherever they originally came from. It wasn't like Fraser made up *his* stories, either.

That was the problem, right there. Stories were what made you, like chinks in your armor, windows into who you were and what made you tick. It was the quiet and the dark up there that made Ray think like this, all philosophical and queer, but he realized that he'd always pretty much believed this. Telling Fraser about the bank robbery and Stella was one way, the best way, because it was a *story*, it wasn't contemporary truth, of opening himself up, showing Fraser who he was. Like a knock at the door, requesting entrance.

But that was the thing: Fraser didn't really ever tell stories about *himself*. His stories were either borrowed -- this happened to Innusiq, my father did that -- or they were about things that Fraser *saw*, not Fraser himself. Tracking criminals, watching wrestling matches, staring down wolverines were all activities and Fraser never really went into what *he* was doing there.

Maybe together all the stories would add up to Fraser, but Ray wasn't too sure about that.

With Fraser, it felt like -- God help him, he shouldn't even have *thought* this, let alone *felt* it -- it felt like, sometimes, that there was no there there. Ray didn't want that to be true, not at all. He was *sure* there was a lot to Fraser, metric tons of ice and history and heart. He felt that, sure as he could touch Fraser's shoulder and feel the muscles and bone. He had a hunch, an instinct, about Fraser, about how much there was, but Fraser wasn't cooperating.

It was like this: Fraser never told stories about himself. They spent one night with the dogs outside of Nicholson Peninsula in the shadow of one of the old Distant Early Warning line stations, and that name, that whole damn *concept*, that was Fraser. Fraser in a nutshell, the whole kernel of the mystery and the weirdness of the freak sitting across from him.

The north was a frontier of the Cold War, pitted with a whole line of radar stations to sense a threat and warn the world. They were empty now; politics didn't need them any more.

Fraser had his own DEW line, wrapped around himself, around his brain and his guts and his tongue, looped so many times Ray didn't even know where to start working him free. He didn't even know if it was his *job* to do that.

*

He was leading Ray on a fool's errand, but after two weeks on the land, Fraser very firmly instructed himself to take Ray home. They left the dogs at the RCMP detachment in Paulatuk, then boarded a plane, a Twin Otter, to Tuktoyaktuk.

"Why're we going west?" Ray demanded once he had made sense of the map. "Fraser. We're going west. We wanna be going north and east. To Iga-- Igaluktu-- or Talurq--Tal--"

"Igaluktuutiaq and Talurqjuaq," Fraser said. "Nice communities, both of them."

"We should be going there." Ray jabbed his thumb at the map; though he was, in fact, touching Greenland, Fraser took his point. "Why don't we stay in Paula-town?"

"Paulatuk?"

"Yeah, that, too." Ray glanced out the window and scratched his jaw. "You sure the dogs're gonna be all right?"

"I'm certain Constable Rankin will take good care of them, yes."

From the floor beneath their seats, Diefenbaker harrumphed and Ray nodded.

"Wolf knows what's what." Scowling, Ray looked back down at the map. "Don't make any sense, going west. You said Franklin's ship went somewhere that's an island or a, a, one of those sticking-out things --"

"Two ships. Peninsula. King William Island, though they weren't sure at the time that it *was* an island. Here --" Fraser steeled himself, lest Ray shake him off or slap him, and slid his arm around the back of Ray's seat. Touching the small mark for King William, he looked at Ray. "That's King William Island. There's a settlement at the southeastern point."

Ray's lips formed the name a few times before he spoke. "Gjoa Haven?"

"Yes."

"So we should go there."

"I don't know many people in Gjoa," Fraser told him. Diefenbaker yipped, reminding him that Julie Frobisher lived just two hundred kilometers across the strait on Cape Colville. "Yes, I'm aware of that. But --" But Julie was blonde, and lovely. Fraser did not particularly relish the thought of introducing her to Ray. Not at this juncture, at least.

"Don't talk to the wolf. Talk to *me*."

"Despite the position of *some*, I don't know anyone in, or near, Gjoa Haven well enough to descend on them without asking. I do, however, know a great many folks in the area around Tuktoyaktuk. And I have a small cabin there."

Ray's nose wrinkled up as he thought about it. Diefenbaker had clucked softly and stood up, stretching and turning around, before tucking himself back into a circle before Ray replied. "All right. Cabin, huh?"

"Yes." It was his grandparents' cabin. Despite the best efforts of himself and his friend Sanomee Kierkegaard, Fraser had not found tenants for it in the last two seasons. While the increase in the value of the Canadian dollar helped him live more comfortably in Chicago, it also meant that American hunters were less likely to rent for long periods.

"Okay, then," Ray said, attempting to fold the map and causing Fraser great pain the longer he fumbled and folded. "And the plane's landing this time, right? No jumping out for turtles that don't even exist."

"If all goes well, yes."

Fraser expected that he would get them settled into the cabin, perhaps spend a restful week or two enjoying the comforts, such as they were, of home, before he broached the subject of their misguided adventure, the inherent absurdity of their goal.

In the last few weeks with Ray, Fraser discovered that he had an innate talent for delay and prevarication that he preferred not to examine too closely. Or at all.

*

"Whoa," Ray said when he stepped off the plane in Tuktoyaktuk. He tipped back his head and his breath blew bright and white out his mouth. "Whoa, Fraser. This is -- this is *whoa*."

Fraser could not help smiling, even though their luggage still needed to be unloaded, even though the airfield wasn't much to look at -- just three landing strips and a hunched collection of outbuildings.

"Big," Ray continued, clapping his hands for warmth. "Big as anything."

"Yes," Fraser said and handed the smaller duffel to Ray. "Come along, there's sure to be a ride we can catch into town."

Ray followed, strangely compliant and quiet, his eyes wide in the strip left bare between the hood of his parka and the nose of his balaclava. He continued like that all the way into town, in the diner where Fraser ordered bean soup and sausage rolls for the both of them.

With the cheque came a flyer for the hamlet's celebration of Nunavut's birth, less than a week away. Hand-drawn fireworks and dancing couples: Fraser folded it into quarters and slipped it into his pocket. Ray would enjoy the festival, there was no doubt about that. It could be his send-off.

Even when squeezed into the front seat of Patsy Anguhadluk's ancient Dodge truck, jostling and bouncing out to the cabin Fraser's grandparents had owned, Ray kept his forehead pressed to the window, arm around Diefenbaker, silent and watchful.

"You coming out to the party next Wednesday?" Patsy called when they'd unloaded their gear. Diefenbaker had already circled the coalshed twice and now sat waiting at the cabin's front door, scratching as if he expected someone inside to welcome him in.

Ray glanced at Fraser, mouth open, and Fraser shook Patsy's hand. "Wouldn't miss it for the world."

The cabin was cold and dark inside, though Fraser had expected worse. Ray helped with the luggage, squatted next to him while Fraser built a fire, leaving the job of shovelling coal into the stove for the morning. All that time, he looked but didn't say a word.

When silent, Ray was oddly incomplete, and Fraser tried to keep talking, but without a partner, conversation became soliloquy. He did not want to lapse into lone expertise again, not up here, not with Ray.

*

They had slept together while on the land. Fraser could not quite understand why it was so difficult, once they had made up the cabin's bed, to lie down next to Ray. Perhaps it was Ray's silence, which shifted rapidly into exhausted snoring, loud enough to drown out even Diefenbaker. Perhaps it was the roof over their head; architecture, however rough-hewn, carried with it assumptions much different from those that obtained outside.

Perhaps it was regret, as wide as the ice-pack and just as heavy on Fraser's chest, that kept him awake all night.

He rose early and, having dressed, made his way out to the coalshed. Sanomee and Patsy kept it stocked, just as there were canned rations in the cabin's cupboard. All the same, Fraser found himself wishing momentarily that there was timber to cut to feed the stove. He needed real hard work if he wanted to burn off this nervous energy.

An hour later, he was grateful there was only coal to shovel. Perhaps, like Ray, he had become solely city-fit, unused to real hard work.

Ray appeared wrapped in an ancient parka, the provenance of which Fraser could never have traced, so large it swept Ray's shins like a woman's cocktail dress.

"You need your own parka," Fraser said. That would mean, of course, that Ray was staying.

Ray did not appear to have heard, for which Fraser was suddenly grateful. Instead, he leaned one shoulder against the shed's north wall -- astounding, really, how he could lounge *anywhere* -- and gazed out over the rocky plain that ran down to the sea.

"Ray?" Fraser ventured.

"Big," Ray said. "So effin' big, Fraser, it's *huge*."

"I daresay the trek we just completed was larger," Fraser said. "We're only fifteen kilometers from town here."

Ray shook his head. "It's not that. Don't know *what* it is, but it -- yeah. Big."

The sky dipped to the sea in a wavering line, ice and charcoal zigzagging together. Fraser nodded slowly, trying to follow Ray's eyes. He leaned on the shovel and mopped his face. "A famous Canadian once observed that the Canadian national ideal might very well be a wilderness without any people in it."

"Yeah?" Ray looked around, squinting, the lines around his eyes standing out starkly. "That's stupid."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Couple reasons -- this ain't wilderness. Big, sure, but it ain't wild. And you can't -- it makes no sense. Can't have a country without no people in it."

"Indeed," Fraser said, loosening the shovel and preparing to dig again.

Ray turned the squint on Fraser. "What's that mean?"

"Hmm?"

"That 'indeed'," Ray said, grabbing the shovel's handle and stilling Fraser's motion. "Not to mention the 'hmm'. What's that mean?"

Fraser released the shovel and met Ray's gaze. "It means I agree with you."

Blinking, Ray started to back up, then stopped. "You do?"

"Yes."

"Even though I'm not a whatsamacallit, one of them *famous Canadians*?"

Fraser rubbed his thumb over his eyebrow, but when a smirk began to stir at the corners of Ray's mouth, he stilled his hand. "No, you're not, but I fail to see what that --"

Pointing at him, grinning now, Ray shook his head. "I got it right, Fraser, that's what it means." He looked out toward the horizon, then turned back to Fraser. "I can hack this. Oh, yeah, I can do this."

Fraser forestalled himself from inquiring what 'this' was. Ray's language was a slippery, inconstant thing, a flow and spurt and roar to rival any rapids. 'This' might have referred to any number of things -- he admired that about Ray, looked forward to the torrent of his words even as its mutability frequently confused him.

*

Ray didn't think cabin fever was anything like *The Shining* made it out to be. It wasn't snow and aloneness that drove you crazy, let alone creepy kids and endless halls. It was more like *other* people did the job for you.

Other people, or one morose Mountie deadset on pretending everything was fine.

"Sartre," Fraser said. He sat uncomfortably at the tiny table next to the stove while Ray stirred Alpha-Getti and freezedried parmesan cheese together. Fraser didn't *say* he was uncomfortable; he didn't have to. All over the big guy's face, in the way his shoulders hunched up around his ears, the squiggle between his eyebrows and his feet flat and heavy on the floor.

Not on account of Ray making dinner -- though if he'd had his wits around him, that'd freaked him out something fierce -- but everything. Everything, ever since they got to Tukto, even before then, seemed like a big flashing sign: Fraser's Upset. Stay Away.

The obvious was too boring for Ray to pay much attention to. Especially if the obvious was suggesting, like it was, like it had been, that Fraser wanted Ray to go home.

"Huh?"

"Sartre said that hell is other people," Fraser said and accepted the chipped blue enamel bowl, heaped with red sauce and little alphabetic pasta pieces. He inhaled gratefully.

"Yeah, well, he was a smart guy." 'Sartre' meant girls in black turtlenecks reading unrhyming poetry and not much more. Ray rested his elbows on the table, all but daring Fraser to say something. "So when'm I getting my parka, huh?"

"About that --" Fraser placed his spoon next to his bowl. "Aren't you eating?"

"Had some bannock this morning." Ray rubbed his stomach, the thermal undershirt catching under his fingers and rising. Fraser looked away and Ray tugged the shirt down. "That shit's good for a week."

"Indeed," Fraser said and picked up his spoon.

"Hey. Parka? About what?" If he had his own parka, Ray was figuring, Fraser couldn't kick him out. Not for a while, at least, because what the flying *fuck* would he do with the thing otherwise? It was a good plan, strong and plain. Ray nodded. "You were saying something about something." Fraser started to set aside his spoon again but Ray caught his wrist. "Eat, man. *Eat*."

"Shall I eat or talk?" Fraser asked and Ray had to grin -- the man actually sounded faintly bitchy. They were making progress.

"Both." Ray lifted his chin. "G'on. Dare you."

Smiling a little, Fraser ate a few mouthfuls, then winced. "Sweet."

"Yeah, that stuff's pure sugar, leetle bit'a tomato," Ray said. When Fraser pushed the bowl away, Ray grabbed it and the spoon. Bannock was overrated; he missed the little animals Fraser had trapped, the ones Ray made him skin with his back turned so Ray didn't know what they were going to eat. Mysterious, but at least they'd been meat. He finished the educational pasta in three dripping bites, then let Dief lick the bowl clean. "So. Talk."

Fraser did his version of fidgeting. It was mostly in the eyes, a little in the fingers but not so's anyone not his partner'd notice.

"Fraser."

"Ray?" So mild, it was enough to drive Ray to his feet. "What are you doing?"

"Moving, Fraser. If you don't talk in three seconds, I swear to God, I'm walking out the door."

"You're not wearing shoes."

Ray lifted his hand off the doorknob and crossed his arms. "You're not talking."

"Ray, I --" Fraser seemed to twist at the shoulders, his head ducking down, and when he looked back up, it was like he was wearing a different face. Half a size smaller, the eyes darker, everything different.

"Three," Ray said and swallowed. He couldn't leave, this wasn't even an adventure yet, it was home ec in Tuktofuckingyaktuk. No matter that Fraser looked like the wolf was gnawing on his guts like sausage links. "Two --"

"All *right*," Fraser said. "It's about the hand of Franklin."

"Yeah?" Quicksilver heat shot through Ray's shoulders and up his neck. So it was nothing important.

"It's not real, Ray. It's -- it's just a story. A metaphor. Specifically, a synecdoche."

Ray was listening, he really was. Hard, harder than he'd listened in a long time to anyone not Fraser or a divorce lawyer. But he was thinking, too. "What's that?"

"A legend, Ray. It's more a symbol than anything else."

"No, no. Not that. The -- the schenectady thing."

"Synecdoche."

"Yeah."

"A figure of speech whereby a part stands for the whole -- the mane for the lion, the hoof for the horse." Fraser paused and did not meet Ray's eyes. "The hand of Franklin."

Ray bobbed his head. "Exactly. It's a, it's a, it's a *clue*."

"No, Ray, it's not." Fraser looked out the window, fingertips resting on his jaw. If there'd been much light -- any light -- out there, his profile would've been glowing. As it was, Ray could kind of make out the fuzz of light hair down the slope of Fraser's nose. "I should have told you earlier. It's just a symbol -- in this case, of the European desire for the Northwest Passage."

Fraser was looking at him now. The skin around his eyes was tight and Ray pushed off from the wall, set to pacing. The cabin wasn't exactly roomy, so it was seven strides per pace before he had to turn. That didn't matter, though. He was getting excited and he had to keep moving.

"It's a clue. It's a clue to -- it's part of a, whaddaya call it, part of a --"

"A legend?"

"No."

"Myth."

"No. Close." Ray turned on his heel; if he'd been wearing his boots, the motion would've been nice and neat. In the thick wool socks Fraser made him wear -- no boots inside, Ray, they'll track in the snow -- he slid a little. He grabbed hold of the mantel and pointed with his free hand at Fraser. "A *mystery*. What happened to 'em? Why's the hand still reaching? Where is it? Huh?"

Fraser didn't reply. He didn't even move, not even as Ray approached and stuck his finger right in Fraser's face, then clutched the neck of his henley. Gestures, not words.

"Huh, Fraser? See what I'm saying? *Mystery*."

Finally, *finally*, Fraser's eyes closed and he nodded. "Yes, in a sense, but --"

"No senses, no buts." Ray banged his hand on the window next to Fraser's head and Fraser opened his eyes. "It's a mystery. You and me, we're detectives. You know what that means?"

"Technically, I'm a peace officer."

"Yeah, yeah, that's not important," Ray said, refraining from pointing out that Fraser was doing *it* again, that thing, the correction-thing, because there were much bigger fish to fry. Huge fish, big as the cannibal cod out in one of the lakes they flew over on their way to Tuktoyaktuk. "What is important, what's the *point* here, is we're detectives, you and me, this is a mystery, bingo-wingo-blammo, this is what we do. We find the hand, find out what happened to the rest of him, old Johnny Franklin, case closed, full stop. She didn't write a damn thing more. You with me?"

Somewhere in there, Fraser started to smile. Eyes crinkled up, tongue licked the corner of his mouth, and Ray realized a beat too late he might have pushed too hard. Gotten too close, maybe pushed through a couple barriers he shouldn't have, but he couldn't exactly pull away, not now, not with Fraser grinning and tilting back his head. "Yes, of course," Fraser said. "No need to ask."

"Nah, that's what we do, I ask, you observe, one-two punch, KO, rack 'em up again, dip two-step do-si-do."

Fraser sucked his lower lip thoughtfully, then glanced down at Ray's hand, still curled in the neck of his shirt.

Right, Ray really ought to let him go. But, the thing was -- thing was, Fraser's skin was real warm, and now he was looking at Ray, and Ray was *excited*, right? Only he wasn't pacing any more, so the movement was going to have to come from somewhere else. The only way to move was forward and he followed that instinct, forward, in toward Fraser, tugging him up.

One of them sighed, but Ray's mouth was mashing against Fraser's, which was opening and stretching, so the sound came from between them, untraceable. Wide and soft, that kiss was like opening up, sparks rising off a fire before winking out before the stars, only no winking out, just rising and warming and getting brighter.

So that was the first time they kissed. For real, that is, not on account of drowning.

*

The north was not blank. It might appear featureless, but this was not the case. It might seem to be composed of the harshest of elements -- wind, rock, and ice -- and, indeed, it was. But harshness had its own sort of grandeur, and was far from *blank*. Though the elements were constantly shifting, transitory, sometimes weightless, it was not empty.

Fraser found he could not tell Ray any of this. This was not the sort of knowledge that could be imparted in a story. Or in any arrangement of words, when it came to that, whatever their overall structure, thrust, intent.

Indeed, he did not even feel the need to tell Ray anything about this until Ray looked around the area outside the coal shed, where the snow rippled like a Gish sister's hair, and said in his casual, sharp way, "That's stupid."

He wanted to show Ray everything -- where he found the caribou despite Quinn's warnings, where Innusiq's sister June fell down a drumlin and rose in the water 100 meters distant, the spot where his grandmother hiked out to write her letters, eat her lunch, and enjoy her own peace. He wanted Ray to see all these places where memory alighted and nested, to see and know and understand without explanation. He wanted Ray to favor him with one of his wide, sharp-toothed grins and in that moment, to *know* Fraser.

He wanted, in essence, to wrap himself in a map, let the landscape substitute for words and declarations, and be loved for it.

And then Ray *did* see, did appear to understand, and Fraser fell a little more.

*

Sizes, and expectations, reversed. Switching places, they threw every habit of thought off. What seemed near was far, night lasted for a quarter of a year, and conducting an adventure meant exercising great patience. Everything turned inside out.

So when they started necking, and then tried other things, and Ray's hands couldn't leave Fraser alone and Fraser's hands were just as curious, just as eager, maybe that made its own inside-out reversed kind of sense, too. It should've been a big thing, a *huge* thing, right? Fucking around with your partner, that had to rank right up there with Major Lifechanging Events.

Only it felt like a small thing. Big in implications, sure, but those weren't scary and dreadful and Oh my god what have I *done*?; they were huge in the way a sunset is big, the way the tundra is big. Reassuring and beautiful and stark, that kind of huge. Relieved.

The actual going-physical part was small. Not even a change, more like a shift. Like snowmelt blurring out the banks of a river, Fraser'd say, or, Ray thought, like Fraser's mindgame where rivers didn't flow *to* the sea, they were the sea licking up inside the land. Reversal, but natural. Like that.

Because it started, if it started anywhere, with sleeping together. That was pure necessity, body heat and being sensible. Desire just kind of happened as a byproduct. Sharing the heat, snuggling up between Fraser and Dief, that just made *sense* and then, somehow, desire did, too.

Not that he started desiring Dief.

No, it was just that Fraser felt good, and right, and desire became like a kind of wisdom, the mute kind that operated without ever having to explain itself. You couldn't explain why the sky was blue or how you did a soft-shoe, you just did it. Well, unless you were Fraser, but he was a freak.

A freak whose mouth tasted like coal and raw sugar, whose hands did this clamping-gesture around Ray's waist to hold him still, whose skin was mottled with scars and knots but still glowed soft in the firelight. A freak who had no idea what to do with Ray's dick, but that didn't stop him from stroking and tasting and snuffling and making Ray come like a goddamn tornado.

Because everything was different and backwards and perfect up here. Ray had never been *opposed* to the idea of guys; it was just that, like the idea of other women, it was purely hypothetical during the Era of the Stella. Before her, he'd been more interested in Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots than touching, and after her, he'd given it a try a couple times, but *nothing* lasted very long in the Aftermath besides the turtle.

*

"That makes no sense," Ray had said when Fraser told him they'd be doing most of their travelling in winter. *Winter*, now there was another stupid word that didn't mean jack up there. Ray knew from winter. He was Chicago born and bred and winter was six months of balls-shrinking cold and snow that never quit, ripping-silk shriek of wind off the lake. Winter up here, though, was not a season. It was just how things were: cold, dim, ground frozen to cement under your boots. "Fraser, old buddy, pal of mine. That makes no sense. It's senseless, it's -- whaddaya call it, it's nonsense. There's a big lack of sense there that I, for one, find deeply troubling."

Fraser just smiled at him, that infuriating/endearing one that dwelled in the corners of his mouth, deep as a seal under ice, flashing up, then vanishing.

They were at Patsy Anguhadluk's Outfitters -- well, Patsy's place was actually about a zillion different establishments -- his home, and a sub-rosa bingo parlor, a nursery school, a printmaking workshop, *and* an outfitters for hunters and hippie tourists. And, apparently, Ray and Fraser. Or Ray, who was finally getting his own damn parka, and about damn time, too.

They were standing in the big room between the kids' playroom and the kitchen, and they were in the outfitters section because that was a caribou skull hanging right over Fraser's head with a couple items of display clothing hanging off the antlers -- a red union suit, just like Fraser's, and a parka and a down vest.

"Why would we travel --" Ray stopped when one of the kids came barrelling past him on his way to the kitchen. He didn't know which kid it was -- Patsy had six, sixteen, some crazy number of kids that Ray thought had only been seen in his old neighborhood where Polacks and wops honored the blessed Virgin by emphatically *not* emulating her. It was probably little Jared, but Ray wouldn't've been comfortable being quoted on that, let alone swearing to it.

"Lemme go!" Jared squealed when Fraser caught him by the back of his shirt. The kid kept running for a couple seconds, his wool socks going whush-whush on the tile. "C'mon, Ben, I'm *hungry!*"

"Where's your father?" Fraser asked as he swung Jared up under his arm, across his back, then dropped him on the floor.

It was a good question. Patsy had disappeared a good hour ago, off to what he called the 'warehouse', which Ray was starting to think was about as far as Chicago. Maybe, to be fair, Vancouver.

"Ask *him*," Ray said, jabbing his finger at the kid. "Ask him about going out in winter. Mouths of babes, all that jazz." Jared was squirming now as Fraser tickled him, whooping and fake-complaining, and neither of them paid any attention to Ray.

But Ray had a point to make and he was unmoved by the kid's cute, toothy grin, let alone by how Fraser was really smiling now as he dropped to his knees and let Jared get him in a headlock.

"Go on," Ray said more loudly. "Forget where his dad's off at. Ask him about your crazy, whacked-out, loco-insane plan to move around outside in *winter*."

"I don't need to." Fraser released Jared. Both of them, big and little, creamy-pale and coffee-dark, looked identical, mussed-up hair and shit-eating grins and flushes down their necks.

Fraser stood up, dusting off his pants, and it wasn't like he was in uniform. He wore jeans, same as Ray, lined with tartan flannel. His were faded, though, not like Ray's, faded and broken-in, velveteen to the touch. Fraser'd produced them the morning after they got to Tuktoyaktuk, produced them like goddamn *magic*, considering that the cabin was barer than a girl at a titty show.

"Kid's a terror," Ray muttered, not meeting Fraser's eye.

"You see," Fraser said, just like Ray hadn't said anything at all, "winter is exactly the best time to travel. The snow and ice are at their firmest, while --"

"Yeah, but they're at their firmest 'cause of the *cold*."

"-- while summer sees a partial thaw and you don't want to go mucking around swampy tundra. No, sir." Fraser gave a knowing little chuckle at that idea, the kind of laugh that preceded one of his longer stories.

Ray held up his hand and counted down his reasons by folding down each finger in turn. "Summer's better. It's got -- one, the sun. Two, not so cold. I think. Three, no blizzards."

"Actually --"

"*Four*, did I mention not so cold?"

Fraser leaned against the edge of Patsy's worktable, his arms crossed loosely over his chest. He was a lot more flexible up here, Ray had already noticed that, looser in the joints. Not just up here, now that Ray was thinking, it'd only been since the kiss -- big letters for that, actually, The Kiss, like a headline -- big gesture, few words. "Summer's a long way off, Ray."

Ray rubbed the back of his neck. "How long?"

"Four months, give or take," Fraser said. "We could cover a lot of ground in those months. Ah, Patrick --" He looked up and Ray followed his gaze. There he was, the longlost Patsy, fighting his way sideways into the room, loaded down with enough parkas and gloves and blankets to warm up a couple villages.

"Sorry 'bout that," Patsy said, dumping the pile on his worktable. "But it's like I always say, can't be too careful with the fit."

Fraser straightened up. "Indeed."

And then it was a flurry of trying things on, with Patsy and Fraser chitchatting like a couple old hens about people they used to know, gossiping a blue streak, and Ray was thrust unpleasantly back to every week before Labor Day of his childhood. Shopping for back-to-school clothes at Ward's and the sale racks at Sears while his mom and Aunt Katie -- or, now, Fraser and Patsy -- clucked around him about fit and hang and drape.

Patsy was excited as Jared, maybe even more so, for the big town party on Wednesday. Fraser was grinning like a goof, too, as they discussed fireworks and whether Sanomee's Karen really would roast her hog.

"What is this party?" Ray demanded, but Fraser just frowned slightly, said something like 'none of it' and after that they ignored him, turning to a discussion of Gore-Tex and PVC and he felt more like a kid than ever.

"You see," Fraser said, when the selections had been made and Patsy was off somewhere digging up a bedroll he thought he could spare, "I'm afraid winter's our best chance."

He patted Ray's shoulder, then left his hand there. Warmly, familiarly. Fraternally, Ray told himself, the gesture was just brother-like. Even dad-like, reassuring and consoling but authoritative.

Ray was about to shrug, twitch and turn away, dream up something snappish to say about frostbite and crazy Canucks, but Patsy came back then.

And Fraser didn't move his hand.

Patsy's black eyes did a flicker, once-twice, back-forth, before he tossed the bedroll at Fraser and said something in Eskimo.

Inuktitut, all right? Ray knew the name of the language.

*

"What the hell is this party and why are they having it in winter and -- *stop* that, Fraser." It was pointless; soon as they got back to the cabin and the stove'd been lit, there was Fraser, looming around, over, behind Ray, helping him off with his outerclothes, touching and licking and -- "Jesus *God*, Fraser."

"I told you," Fraser said, drawing slightly back. "The party is for the establishment of Nunavut."

"And Nunavut would be what, exactly?" Ray dug the caribou jerky out of his front pocket and broke off a piece for Dief. "Not a word, Fraser."

Dief gulped down the dry meat and licked his jaws, looking back and forth between them. He was, Ray thought, kind of sort of like the old lady in *Fiddler on the Roof*; he liked them together. He liked *watching* them together, which was crazy and creepy but kind of made Ray grin when Fraser wasn't looking.

No there there with Fraser. Ray knew there was, tasted and felt it, but the idea still niggled at him. There *was* a there, inside Fraser, big as the tundra, but it was so damn well-protected, like Area 51, it might as well have been gone.

Ray had tried listening, and prying, but neither really worked all that good when it came to untangling the barbed wire around Fraser. But there were things that got Fraser excited -- well, besides, apparently, the way Ray scratched his belly after a good meal. Never let it be said that Fraser was not a freak and a half -- and this Nunavut-thing was at the top of the list.

"The land-claims were made in the 1970s, and since then, the government and the Inuit have been negotiating the formation of a new territory. It's quite marvelous, actually, the first native-run state outside of Africa."

"What about India?"

"Point taken. But, you see, I meant one within a pre-existing federal structure."

"Oh, right, of *course*." Ray poked the fire with the big brass stick and shifted his weight. "I dunno, Fraser, isn't it like South Africa and the apartment, the, apart-thing?"

"Apartheid. No. The government is public, rather than wholly native."

"So how's it gonna work?"

"Well, the federal government is making restitution both in terms of land and of money, so the transfer payments to the territory as well as to individuals should be quite remarkable."

"Sounds pretty Commie." Ray sat back, kicking his legs out in front of him. "Kinda pinko."

"Well, yes, I suppose, although --" Fraser's voice was quieter, not so much excitement in it any longer.

Ray hooked his arm around Fraser's shin and pulled himself over until he was sitting between Fraser's legs, his head on Fraser's thigh, looking up. "Not a criticism. Just sayin'."

"Of *course*," Fraser said, mimicking Ray's own voice and smiling. He pushed his fingers through Ray's hair, this weird Fraser-combo of petting and combing all at the same time.

It felt so fucking good Ray didn't know whether to sleep or come.

*

Ray was beyond language.

Touching him, tasting the musk in his mouth and pooled around his groin, feeling him from the inside out, lapping up the salt-sour of his ejaculate, Fraser was well and truly lost. Perhaps he was perfectly home -- as Ray would say, six-half dozen, pot, kettle. Words tangled in Fraser's throat when it came to Ray, inexorably looping back on themselves and knotting up like traplines.

Fraser had an impressive vocabulary; his grandmother had seen to that. He was, furthermore, strong and confident of his own strength; his father had ensured that. He could observe the minutest shifts in ice, clouds, fowl and mammals, thanks to his grandfather.

But he could not speak, could hardly touch, even *look*, without shaking, when it came to Ray.

He had passed into vertiginous territory, lying here in the mess of sleeping bags and limbs and Diefenbaker, looking at the low russet light playing an intricate game of chess across Ray's narrow waist and sharply jutting hip.

Shuddering with the danger of it, Fraser chased a shadow down Ray's thigh with his fingertip. Sleepily, Ray mumbled and tossed himself onto his back, arm thudding against the wall.

"Ow. Motherfucker ow." Ray spoke thickly, lifting his head, finding Fraser's gaze through heavily-lidded eyes. "Hey."

"Hello," Fraser said. He had no marrow, and few bones, any longer. He was ash, and cinder, and ancient fallen leaves, stirred up inside straining skin. "I woke you. I apolo--"

"Hell, not a problem." Ray's hand was caught in a fold of the sleeping bags and it came free with a whisking sound, then settled on Fraser's shoulder. "What's up?"

Fraser rolled his lips together, feeling the immensity of his teeth, solid as earthworks, within his mouth. His dry breath whistled dully in his nose.

"Hey," Ray said, pulling himself up, then craning forward. "Hey. Fraser?"

Ray's mouth smelled like jerky and sleep, granular and salty, and Fraser found it easier to kiss him than to answer. Ray kissed, always, eagerly, even earnestly, nipping and sucking, as if Fraser were a secret fruit to be gulped and swallowed in seconds. Ice cream on a summer day, soon to vanish, and the thought of that, of losing *this*, drove Fraser up to his knees, arms around Ray's waist, His cock twitched, almost painfully, stirring against his thigh, and he found himself thrusting against Ray's belly as if desperate to be let in.

Ray chuckled low in his throat, and how could he *do* that? This felt too good, it could not, should not, feel like this, skin-friction and wet yearning mouths, slicking over each other's cheeks, stubble rasping and hips lifting as Ray grasped Fraser's cock and stroked it up, harder, straining, biting Fraser's lower lip and speaking directly into his mouth.

"Got you, got it right here, feel that? Got you --"

Fraser's own fingers were thick, sodden lichen, as he reached and fumbled for Ray's cock. So very hot, unbearable and silken, and Ray gasped, his back arching in the stove's light, driving into Fraser's hand.

"I got --" Fraser tried and Ray's head fell back even as he tightened his grasp and Fraser bit the rise of Ray's Adam's apple and felt the blood shuddering beneath the skin. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Diefenbaker covering his snout with his paw, yet one black eye was fixed on them. "Got you--?", the sound of his voice breaking into a question as Ray pushed him backward, clambering on top and pushing into Fraser's fist as he pulled all the shaking out from Fraser in a long, twisting ribbon, tugging it out and out until Fraser's spine shot out and his buttocks tightened and he emptied himself, grunting.

"You got it," Ray said, grinning sharp and wide and twisting his hips against Fraser's slack grip. Then his face sharpened, drawing tight as he snapped his hips faster and groaned. "Got it, take it, take it *all* --"

Fraser was gone, empty, a skin beaten by a distant hand.

*

The next afternoon, the sound of a truck sputtering and grinding over the ice and gravel outside pulled Fraser out of the back room to join Ray at the window.

"It's Sanomee," Fraser said, tossing the dustrag over his shoulder and hurrying to open the door.

Whoever Sanomee was, she was a looker -- native or Inuit (apparently they were different things) with short, glossy black hair and a sway to her full hips that did things to Ray's stomach. Hypothetical things, sure, but strong all the same.

"Come in!" Fraser called from the stoop but Sanomee shook her head and stayed just outside the door.

"Party's off," Sanomee said. "Thought you probably hadn't heard."

"Pardon?" Fraser asked.

"What, no pig?" Ray asked.

Her eyes flicked over to him, but that was all. Sanomee looked back at Fraser and shrugged.

"No pig, no fireworks, nothing," she said. "Somebody took it on himself to steal the big crate of fireworks out of Patsy's warehouse, so no party."

"Sanny --" Fraser tried but she stepped back as he reached to touch her shoulder.

"Just wanted to let you know. Called the detachment, but you know how Matty Latrobe is --"

"Yes, sadly," Fraser said.

"What?" Ray demanded. "Who's he? What's he like?"

Sanomee's dark eyes fixed on him and she shrugged. "He's a Mountie."

"Yeah, but --" Ray was wearing an old uniform shirt of Fraser's he'd found in the trunk, threadbare in the elbows but soft as anything. It was a good, pale brown, like coffee. Under Sanomee's gaze, he started to fidget and had to cross his arms. "That means he's --"

"Regardless," Fraser said, putting his arm between Ray and Sanomee, like they were about to start fighting. That would've surprised Ray, but Fraser had freakish instincts.

"Matty said it wasn't a robbery on account of we hadn't gotten the fireworks permits yet anyway. 'course, he's the fire marshal, so it's on him to give 'em to us."

Fraser frowned, forehead wrinkling up and lips going very thin and pale. "But Patsy's still certified, I'm sure of it. He has the diploma on his wall. Latrobe is --"

"Know what he is," Sanomee said. "Just thought you'd like to know the party's off."

"Thank you for informing me. Let me talk to Ray and I'll be in touch."

"Yeah, you do that," Sanomee said, already turning away and crunching through the snow back to her jeep.

Fraser closed the door slowly, his hand flat on the wood, and took his own sweet time before turning to Ray.

"What's *her* problem? She have something for you?"

"What?"

Ray jerked his head in the direction of the driveway. "Seemed real snippy. Thought maybe she -- and you -- you know. Like she didn't like me."

Gradually, the comprehension appeared on Fraser's face, clarifying and hovering before he grinned and ducked his head. "No, no. Sanomee and I are --. No, nothing like that."

"You sure?"

"Quite sure," Fraser said. He was still grinning like a big goof, and then, just like *that*, he wasn't smiling. He was peering at Ray and Ray got nervous, started to think maybe he'd pushed too far again, suggesting they were a couple, worth getting jealous over. He was probably about to give Ray some long story about wanting what you couldn't have, or how nothing is permanent and turn, turn, ashes to ashes, something like that, and it wasn't like *Ray* wanted to talk couple-things, but he really shouldn't have assumed. Ass, me, Fraser.

"Fraser --"

"Ray," Fraser said, all serious and sober.

Ray pulled himself up, fixing his posture, narrowing his eyes. He could take it. Fraser could give him any fucking Dear John speech he wanted, and Ray could give it back twice as hard. "Yeah?"

"We need to find those fireworks."

The tension running down his chest into his legs and around his fists snapped and Ray kind of rolled, even though he was still standing up. "What?"

"The fireworks, Ray. We need to find them."

"Oh, no, Fraser, no, we do not. You heard Snippy-Girl. They don't even got a permit yet and the cops're on it and --"

"You said yourself that we're detectives," Fraser said quietly.

"Right, but I was just making a point. A *point*. I didn't --"

Fraser's chin tilted up a little. "Rhetorical or not, it is the case. And these people need our help."

"No, Fraser. The *case* is the hand. That's the mystery, that's what we're detecting. That's why we're -- *Hey*. Don't look at me like that."

Fraser was *looking* at him. Stubborn and hopeful, all at the same time, and Jesus *fuck*, his eyelashes were long. Pretty.

"Like what?"

"Li-li-like *that*. Oh, no, Mr. Puppy Eyes, we are *not* --"

"I am not a puppy --"

Ray waved his hand. "You are, but that's not the point. We got our own stuff to do. We got Franklin and his hand and --" Ray broke off, because he knew that look on Fraser's face. Not really hopeful, now it was just stubborn. Tight jaw, wide eyes, a little down in the mouth. Sighing, Ray rubbed the back of his neck and glanced away. "So first we round up some runaway M-80s, huh?"

"If you care to, yes."

"I *don't* care to. Don't care one eensy little bit. But that don't matter."

Fraser coughed lightly. "Of course it matters, Ray, I --"

"C'mon," Ray said, pulling on his new parka and fumbling with the zipper and velcro flaps. So many layers made it pretty much impossible to pull off a dramatic exit. "Let's go find the truants."

*

On the way into town, Fraser tried to explain that the local Mountie was a real asshole, only, being Fraser, he used nicer words that added up to the same thing. He also tried to impress -- his word, of course -- on Ray the fact that not everyone was too pleased about Nunavut.

"Unpleased enough to steal *fireworks*?" Ray asked, pulling Dief by the collar back from nosing around in the glove compartment. "No chocolate there, bud, I already checked."

Dief snuffled Ray's hand. Trust had to be built, Fraser always said, but Ray figured Dief was a lost cause on that front.

"And worse," Fraser said.

"But when we wake up on Thursday morning, we'll be in Nunavut all the same."

Fraser laughed, but it was like rocks tumbling down, no happiness there. "Not unless we catch a flight east."

"Whaddaya mean? It's happening, one way or the other, ain't it?"

"Yes," Fraser said, taking the right turn sharply enough that Dief thudded against Ray, then looked at him like it was *his* fault. "But Tuktoyaktuk will remain in the Territories."

"So they're having a party for something that isn't happening to them but that thing pisses someone else off -- even though it ain't happening to him neither -- enough that he goes and takes fireworks and ruins everyone's fun like the Scrooge of Nunavut?"

Nodding, Fraser blinked against the low sun and cruised to a stop in front of the diner.

Nothing made any kind of normal sense up here. Ray was getting used to that fact. Ray was starting to *like* that fact.

"I'm going to make some inquiries," Fraser said when they stepped outside. Nice, clear day, all blue and white and gray. Like Dief, Ray realized, finally putting it all together. The wolf matched his world, same as Fraser.

"I'll meet up with you," Ray said. They were just down the street from the general store Fraser'd pointed out their first night in and Ray's hands were sweating inside his mittens. "Got some stuff to pick up."

Fraser gave him an odd look, so brief it might've just been the sun hitting his face funny, before nodding. "Very well. Ask around, if you can, will you? Meet me at the cellar in an hour."

"What's the cellar?" Ray remembered to ask, but Fraser was already striding away, his back straight and shoulders wide, glowing with the sun, the snow crunching underfoot. "Right. Okay."

He was talking to himself. Ray shook his head and set off in the opposite direction for the store.

He wasn't sure what he'd been expecting, but the store really wasn't it. He'd been picturing some cross between the Olsons' general store on *Little House* and a supermarket, and this was that, plus a Ski-Doo dealer and hardware store. Chemical toilets and camp showers were lined up hard by econo-sized boxes of cereal and rice. There was a single aisle for produce, the prices of which made Ray's stomach hurt. $2.49 for a wrinkled green pepper, $1.99 for a tiny plum tomato with black spots.

Toilet paper and wrapping paper headed one aisle and Ray hoped that paper products would lead to -- oh, yeah, feminine hygiene products, $12.99 for *pantyliners*, Jesus, and thus to rubbers and -- fuck. The only lube they carried was K-Y, which reminded him unpleasantly of his parents' night-table drawer and things he really didn't want to think about. He and Stella had always used something else, *anything* else, and the guys he'd been with invariably had Astroglide. That was what Ray'd been hoping for, as if lube brands had their own sexuality or some shit.

Long as it was slick, he was good. He better be good, what with $15.29 for the lube and another thirteen bucks for standard Trojans, and suddenly, when he was paying, he started feeling like a kid again. Like everyone -- and there were only four people in the store including him, but that didn't matter -- could see into his head, all his suddenly deviant and porno thoughts.

This was stupid. He was a grown man, he didn't have to buy magazines and candy bars to try and cover up the real purchases, and it wasn't their business anyway what he wanted to do to Fraser. Repeatedly, in several positions, with maybe blindfolds. Fraser'd once said something about the state having no business in your bedroom, and Ray was all in favor of that. Shame the state didn't extend to include people at the general store.

The girl at the register waved the box of rubbers, grinning at him. "Got a big night planned, eh?"

He didn't know what she was talking about for a second, and then he *did*, and he started coughing and couldn't stop. "Somethin' like that."

"You're the Mountie's friend, right?"

It couldn't get worse, Ray was sure, and then someone came up behind him and elbowed him in the ribs. "The Yank? What's he getting?"

It was a big woman, tanned face deeply lined, her hair cropped to her big skull, her voice deeper than Ray's own. "Yeah," Ray said and wanted to hit something. Small towns -- you heard about 'em, but it was a million times worse, the way your business was everyone else's. "Buying sexual supplies for my own personal and private, confidential, use. Like to stock up, see, don't wanna impose on Fraser." The women smirked at each other and Ray raised his voice. "So what's up with the fireworks, huh? Anyone heard anything 'bout the stuff going missing?"

The big woman frowned, her whole face drawing downward an inch or more. "Zundel. You tell Ben not to get mixed up in this."

"What's a zundel?" They wouldn't answer, not in English -- there was a little flurry of Inuktitut before the girl handed him his change and the woman patted his back -- and Ray felt the heat of irritation swinging like a pendulum, switching places with chills and shivers. "Okay, then. How about a place called the cellar? Anyone wanna point me there?"

The girl gave him directions and Ray stuffed the bag into his innermost parka pocket, stomping towards whatever this cellar was. Outbuilding, it looked like, same corrugated-steel walls and plain door, but when he opened it, there were just stairs leading downward into the dark.

"Fraser?"

Fraser's voice filtered up out of the darkness. "Down here, Ray."

The stairs went a long way down and he didn't know where he was or which way was up by the time he hit level ground. Blindly, Ray wheeled around and bumped into something solid as concrete but red and bumpy. A side of meat, it looked like, probably musk-ox or caribou or some other freakish animal that decided it'd be a real good idea to live up here and look where *that* got it -- hacked in half and hanging underground. His head rang from the impact. "Meat. Ow. And ice, and some more meat. What the hell *is* this place anyway?"

"A meat locker, Ray." Fraser was squatting over by the far wall. Ray could just barely make him out in the dark and the swinging carcasses. "Huh."

Ray edged his way carefully over. "Huh what? Huh how? What're you doing? What've you got?"

Fraser looked up, holding up his index finger. "The walls are softening."

"Walls don't *soften*, Fraser."

"They do if they're permafrost and temperatures are rising."

"Not so perma, then," Ray said and grinned, but Fraser just nodded soberly. "What?"

As he straightened up, Fraser was frowning and sliding something into an inner pocket. "Global warming isn't simply a theory. The effects are everywhere."

"And that has what to do with fireworks?"

"Hmm?" Fraser was staring off into space, at the sides of meat, and it took him a moment to look back at Ray. "Oh, nothing, I suppose."

"Okay then," Ray said. Not like he could do anything just then to help the situation. He elbowed Fraser gently, hoping to distract him. "What's in your pocket?"

"Nothing."

"Liar."

"I don't --"

"You lie all the time, Fraser. You call it politeness and discretion and all those Mountie virtues but you *do* lie. What's in your pocket?"

Fraser backed up. "Nothing, I assure you."

Ray feinted forward like he was going to grab Fraser, but the expression of shock and worry that contorted Fraser's face made him stop. There was pushing, and then there was *pushing*, and Ray was pretty sure he knew the difference.

Besides, it wasn't like *he* didn't have something hidden in his own pockets.

"Okay, okay," Ray said, holding up his hands and smiling. "So there's nothing down here. Why're we here?"

Fraser didn't answer. He rubbed his nose and touched Ray's cheek, but he was silent. The package in Ray's parka suddenly felt very heavy, very obvious. And the parka itself, plus Fraser's own, made it real hard to get close. But Ray darted in anyway, kissing Fraser as his shoulder caught another piece of meat and pushed it into Fraser.

*

Weird, alien, really totally freakish to make out in a *meat cellar*, but Fraser'd always had this way of leading Ray across the border to Bizarro World and then acting surprised when Ray tried to make do and do as in Rome.

"I talked to the minister," Fraser said as they climbed out of the cellar into the afternoon twilight. "He said he had no idea who'd be so cruel as to steal the community fireworks."

"Yeah, well, *I* got a lead." Ray swiped his hand across his mouth and waited for Fraser to look surprised. *There* it was, oh, yeah. "Wanna hear it?"

"Please."

They were walking out of town, and it occurred to Ray that the truck was the other way, but, hey. He had a lead. "Something called a zundel."

Fraser stopped, wheeling around, grabbing Ray by the shoulders. He looked sick, red in the face, his lips pursing like he was about to spit. Or curse. "Say that again."

"Whoa, buddy," Ray said, but Fraser dug his fingers in. "Zundel."

"Zundel."

"And they got real twitchy when I asked what that was," Ray said. "Like it was bad luck, just saying the word."

Fraser was tugging him off the road, such as it was, into a scrubby little stand of trees. Shrubs, more like it. "Who told you this?"

"Girl at the store," Ray said. "And a big butch lady. Looked like Caesar. Maybe Patton, only *scarier*."

Squatting down, Fraser pulled Ray with him, and Ray fell into the crouch like it was natural. Maybe it was; it hadn't always been like that. He used to crash forward onto hands and knees, back when they started out with the dogs.

"Karen," Fraser said, rubbing his chin, then poking at the snow with his finger. "Sanomee's Karen, as a matter of fact. Oh, Ray. Look at this --"

There was snow on the finger of Fraser's glove and Ray glanced at it. "Karen of the roasted pig that ain't happening?"

"Yes."

"*She's* with your hot-to-trot little friend?"

Fraser's eyebrows did a little miniature version of the wave, rippling across his forehead, but he didn't say anything. Just pushed his finger toward Ray. "Potassium perchlorate."

"Sparkly," Ray said, squinting at the snow. "So Sanny likes 'em big and brawny, huh?"

"Ray, this is flash powder." Fraser's tongue darted out, tasted the snow, and Ray wasn't ever going to *not* get freaked by that. Wincing, Fraser added, "Extremely high concentrations, I'd say. We're on the right track."

He rose quickly, not a speck of snow on his knees, and Ray stumbled up after him. They were heading even farther away from town and the truck now, and although it looked like Fraser knew where he was going, Ray wasn't too sure.

"Cops're on it," he reminded Fraser when he caught up with him at the bottom of a little hollow. It was a degree or two warmer down here, and *how* Ray could tell that, he'd like to know.

"Latrobe's almost as bad as Zundel," Fraser said, tart as a fucking lemon, as he scanned the landscape. "Now, if I remember correctly --"

He ran the flat of his palm over the ice, head cocked like Dief catching the sound of the sandwich cart, then stopped. Yanking up a slab of ice, he had a look of triumph on his face, pure pride that made Ray stop in his tracks. He *would've* stopped, that is, if he hadn't already been standing still.

"Another cellar?" Ray asked, peering into the roughly drilled hole.

"Yes. A tunnel, actually." Fraser crouched, then jumped in, and Ray took one last look around the big sky and silent ice, tossed a prayer up to whoever might be listening, and followed.

He landed hard on one knee, pain flaring bright and fast up his leg, and started to curse when Fraser took his hand and gestured to bend low. Dark as fucking *Hades* in here, and close, not nearly nice as the meat cellar, and they were going into the dark.

Great. Fucking great, hobbling into the dark permafrost with a rogue Mountie.

They crawled for a short bit, then Fraser stopped him, finger on his lips for silence.

Hand over hand up an old metal ladder coming loose from the permafrost, and they popped out in the middle of what looked like a big shed. Unheated, of course, it stank of dogs and piss and something that Ray couldn't place. Like *fur*, but gross, dirty, blood-spattered fur. When his eyes started adjusting, he could make out little carcasses hanging from the walls and the rafters.

They could have been kitties, or rabbits, it didn't matter, not now that they were skinned and strung up like little crucified babies. The furs were hung on the opposite wall, white and dull brown, and Ray thought he might be sick.

Ray whistled, low and quiet. "Who is this guy?"

"I've known Georgie Zundel since grade five," Fraser said. "He liked to hurt things. It would seem that hasn't changed."

Everywhere Ray looked, he saw dead animals and pink muscles. "Junior psycho, huh?"

"Yes," Fraser said, leading Ray to the darkest corner and crouching down. "He liked to hurt *me* as well."

"What?" He couldn't see anything but the broadest outlines of Fraser's face, cheekbones and dark eyes, emerging from the shadows.

"I believe he took exception to my family's tradition of RCMP service."

"What? Nah. Everyone loves Mounties."

"Not everyone."

"Why not? You got the uniform, and the wolf, and the Musical Ride, the -- the -- what else you got?"

In the dimness of the shed, Fraser's smile was almost impossible to see, but Ray could catch the way his lips stretched and the corners deepened. "The RCMP is not, necessarily, an ever-benevolent organization. There have been some unfortunate activities in the past --"

"Yeah, but I'm getting the sense that wasn't this kid's problem."

"No, I expect not. Georgie's problems, however, were so complex and varied that I doubt even Georgie himself is aware of the extent to which they have harmed himself and others."

It was just like Fraser to forgive a thug and a bully. Tore *himself* to bits over the schenectady-hand, but anyone else got a free pass. Ray shook him by the shoulder. "Fraser. What'd he do?"

"He hit me with an otter."

He shouldn't laugh. Ray tried, but some of it came out, little burps and hiccups of laughter. "No, really."

"I assure you. He hated me, hated the world, hated the Mounties. He shot sea-otters out of season and if they didn't die from the shot, he'd drag them up on shore and leave them to flail and die. Sometimes he set them on fire on the detachment's stoop."

"Jesus."

"Hardly," Fraser said. He sounded off, not quite the lulling, soothing of his storytelling voice, but a long way from the stiff politeness he treated everyone else to. It was like he was talking to himself -- not too hard to picture, Ray'd caught him at that more times than he could count, though not since they'd come up north -- or to the wolf. A little hoarse, pretty soft. Private. "One day he came to school -- he hardly ever came to school, his father was a trapper and believed that literacy makes you soft -- with a dead bull otter. He swung it over his head, much like a bolo, striking me around the face and across the chest with it."

"What'd you do?"

"I wrestled the carcass from him while the teacher radio'ed my father."

"*You* got in trouble? That ain't fair, Fraser, you were just --"

"No, my father was the local law enforcement."

"Oh." Ray leaned a little closer to Fraser and studied him. He had less than no idea what to say, but he was sure Fraser wasn't looking for a reply. Still, though, Ray knew himself, knew he needed to say something, do something, move or talk or yell or hit. But he couldn't move, couldn't think of anything to say. There seemed to be a great quiet opening up inside of him.

Nylon and wool whispered as he slid his arm around Fraser's back and patted him. Brotherly-like, not that Ray'd ever had a brother, but it was like that. Like the way he'd always touched Fraser, way before they'd ever started the naked touching, the way he'd -- Ray knew this like the sky knew your face -- always touch Fraser.

Fraser was a freak. Even up here -- maybe even *especially* up here -- Fraser was as much of a freak as he'd ever been down in the city. People up here didn't get him any more than Ray or Welsh had gotten him. Ray had pretty much assumed that the tundra was full of Frasers, but he'd been wrong. It was sad -- it'd've been real nice if there was some place Fraser had people who got him, just one spot on earth -- but it also, in the most selfish of ways, made Ray feel a little better.

"Zundel took the fireworks," Ray said at last.

Fraser nodded, pointing at a big crate in the opposite corner. Ray got down on hands and knees and scooted forward, looking at the crappy plywood floor, keeping himself from looking at all the dead things. The crate was as long as he was tall.

Fraser tossed him a crowbar and Ray eased off the top. These were fireworks, all right, packed in foam peanuts and straw, rockets and cakes of multiple rockets, bright paper packaging with dragons and happy monkeys cavorting together.

"This is some good shit," Ray whispered over his shoulder. "Let's set one off." Even across the room, he could *feel* the force of Fraser's frown. "What?"

"That's evidence, Ray."

"Yeah, yeah." He replaced the lid and crawled back. "So whatta we do now?"

"We wait."

"*Wait*? The fireworks're right there, we just take 'em back --"

"If I know Georgie Zundel, and I'm afraid that I do, he'll be back soon enough to play with his ill-gotten loot."

They waited. Up here, there was a lot of travelling but even more waiting. Nothing made sense, Fraser was still Fraser but the sky was a million times bigger and Ray's head ought to have been swimming but it wasn't, which was more nonsense.

Fraser had told him a real story. A *real* one, about himself. The quiet just kept on blooming inside Ray.

"Y'know," he whispered later. "I always hated stakeouts. Hated the waiting. The goddamn soulsucking *boredom*."

"Is that so?"

"You know that's so. But I'm sitting here and I'm dying inside a little from the cold and the boringness. And I actually kinda *miss* sitting in my car with nothing inside my head."

"I'm sorry to hear that, Ray," Fraser said and he sounded sad. Like Stella did, actually, whenever he'd come up with yet another proposal for working things out, like she was just so tired of being nice.

"Let me finish."

"I thought you were." Fraser stared straight ahead. "Finished, that is."

"Nope," Ray said, warmth spreading down his chest. "You thought wrong, friend. Not finished by a good long shot."

It took a little too long for Fraser to turn his head, but when he did, it was worth the wait. Blinking, his upper lip curling into his cheeks, he looked about ten years old. On Christmas morning.

"Have I ever told you about Judge Sissons?" Fraser asked, reaching into his inside pocket.

There was left field, then there was out of the blue, and way past that, there was wherever it was that Fraser came from and talked about. "Huh?" Ray asked.

"Jack Sissons was the first judge of the new Supreme Court of the North," Fraser said. "He presided over some of the most important decisions regarding the Inuit and the southern legal system."

"Okay --"

"He commissioned native carvings to commemorate some of those decisions." Fraser raised his hand between them. "This --" Fraser held out a small figure, hooded, arms stretched up. "-- was my mother's. Having received it from Judge Sissons, my father gave it to her. Now I'm giving it to you."

"What is it?" Ray asked suspiciously.

"A young girl," Fraser said, "named Nerevik. She was an orphan, Ray. When they broke camp, her people tried to leave her behind because she had no one to care for her. She was a drain on resources. She followed their boats and clung to one. The people hacked off her fingers, then her hands, when she clung to the boat."

Ray grimaced, then scowled, getting that sensation he thought he'd left behind in Mort's basement in Chicago, the hovering-death and inescapable *rot* thing. "And so you thought, hey, my best buddy Ray, he likes horror movies. Except I don't, you know my stomach. But you're giving this to me anyway?"

"Yes." Fraser held the figure out, cradled in his palm.

"Why?"

"I wanted you to have it."

"Yeah, Fraser, that's normally why we give things to people. but why? Why this?"

Fraser squinted slightly and said, "Well, I wanted to finish telling you the story first."

"That is not a happy story, Fraser."

Frowning, Fraser looked back down at the figure. "Well, no. I suppose it isn't."

Ray took the figure, pinched between thumb and forefinger, trying to swallow the distaste rising in his throat. Red yarn was looped through little hooks poked into the stumps of the upreaching hands. Bright as Fraser's dress serge, red and frayed, and that was supposed to be blood, flowing and spurting. The round, featureless face of the doll was screaming, maybe. Probably screaming, from the blood and the hacking. But if you didn't know that, she could be laughing. Creepy.

Creepy, and Ray was about to crack a joke when he realized Fraser was doing the puppy-eyes again. And it'd be just like Fraser to do those eyes and never even know what he was pulling.

"Thanks," Ray said and stuffed the doll into his pocket. "Really, Fraser. Thank you."

"You're very welcome."

They stared at each other. It was dark and the shed smelled like shit and they were in the ass-end of the world, but all the same, Ray got the shivers. Not the good kind. The memory-kind, because he was looking at Fraser, and Fraser was looking back, just like they'd stared at each other the first day. When they both knew Ray was a fraud and a con job and it was only a matter of time.

"Right, okay," Ray said and coughed -- hacked, really -- against the back of his hand. "Tell me more about Zundel."

Fraser's expression tightened. He looked half-sick again. "He is a racist, the most vicious sort. He considers himself a nationalist, but his vision of the nation is purely white and English-speaking."

"So he wants to ruin the Nunavut fun." Ray thought of the syllabics on the street signs, all the dark faces and wide grins throughout town, the unpronounceable names. The simple fact that, hey, Inuit were here first. "Why would someone like that live up *here*?"

"I wish I knew. Perhaps, like his father, he espouses a sort of warped modern-day Manifest Destiny. Perhaps he just feels at home here."

"Whatever it is, he's an asshole." Fraser nodded at that, so Ray added, "Not like Zundel's one of your typical Canadian names, anyway."

"No. His father was Prussian, I believe."

"Idiot." In Ray's experience, racism was one of the slipperiest things going. As a cop, even when he was at school, getting bussed halfway out to Winnetka, he counted as white. But put him at after-church Sunday brunch with Stella's family, and he was always just that much lesser. Always the Polack who smelled funny. Worst thing about racism, he'd always thought, was how retarded it was. "Fucking *idiot*."

"Yes." Fraser looked real sad for a second, then blinked hard and cleared his throat. "I'm sorry, Ray, that you're seeing this. This part of life up here."

"Hey, Fraser. Hey." Ray had to snap his fingers a couple times before Fraser focused on him. "Big boy here. Think I can handle a Arctic redneck or two --" The sounds of guns being cocked suddenly rattled through the shed. Stiffening, Ray looked around. Ten guys fanned out in front of them, wearing black-ops outfits, their faces covered. "Or ten. Christ."

They stood up, back to back, when the tallest guy waved his shotgun at them.

"Thought you'd be here, Mountie."

"Hello, Georgie," Fraser said. Ray wanted his pistol; his hand was empty without it. Not that it'd be much use against ten shotguns, but he missed it. "How are you?"

"Disgusted," Zundel said, stepping ahead of his line of goons. He had a beard like ZZ Top curling through the wool of his balaclava like ugly pubes, streaked with gray. "You got a warrant? A writ? Or this just a social call?"

"Heard you had some firecrackers," Ray said as he and Fraser pivoted. "Wanted to play."

"Aww, Mountie made a friend," Zundel said and spit. "Always knew you were a faggot. Whaddaya think, Matty?"

Fucking *hell*, that was the local Mountie coming up behind Zundel, laughing. Fraser hadn't been kidding about him being dirty.

"Latrobe," Fraser muttered.

"Benton Fucking Do-Right Fraser." Latrobe shifted the butt of his rifle against his soft belly. "Here to bring me down like you did Gerrard?"

Fraser stiffened against Ray's back.

"This is stupid," Ray said under his breath. He had nerves sparking out all over his body and energy coiling tight and flaring inside his hands and legs and nowhere to go.

"What would you suggest?" Fraser wasn't being sarcastic, Ray knew that right away. He actually wanted to know.

They were about six paces from the crate. Zundel and his cronies were lined up in front of them, and Ray could make it to the crate. "Gimme your matches."

Matches in hand, Ray let out his favorite war-cry, the whooping one, and sprinted for the crate. "Let's have some fun!" he called, jumping on top.

He brought his right foot down on the lid's corner, flipping the lid upward, catching it, and sending it wobbling like the world's worst frisbee at the henchmen.

It clattered onto the floor, a good three feet from making contact with anyone, Ray shrugged and lit the first match. "Blow this thing outta orbit --"

"Ray --"

"I got it, Fraser. So. How fast do you think this'll burn?"

Fraser's mouth opened, Zundel started shouting about God-given rights to private property, and Ray lit another match. Brought it down close enough to the crate a couple peanuts started to melt like marshmallows.

"Couple more matches," Ray said, glancing up in time to see five or six guys backing slowly up, "and we're *all* going into space."

Six guys took off running, but two more looked at each other and at Zundel. He yelled at them in German while Ray jumped up and down, waving his match-arm, whooping.

Hard to hear anything, but the white streak moving toward the two lingerers was unmistakable; Dief knocked them down, then circled them, teeth bared, as they stumbled to their feet, leaving the guns. Dief turned on Zundel then and those two shrugged and broke for it.

Ray howled and yelped just for the hell of it, getting louder when Dief joined in, barking at Zundel. Ray was fucking *crazy*; maybe Tuktoyaktuk didn't know that yet, but they were learning fast.

Latrobe was shouting at Zundel, waving his gun, and Fraser had a clear line of sight to tackle him from behind, wrenching one arm back and helping himself to the gun. Whimpering, Latrobe scuttled backward and Fraser turned the gun on Zundel while Dief held Latrobe down with one paw. The match burned down to Ray's fingers and he shook it out, then sucked the hurt out of his finger.

"True north," Zundel spat as Ray hopped down and took the gun out of his hand. "Strong and fucking *free*."

"Yeah, yeah," Ray said and shoved him face first into a carcass. "Tell it to the bunnies."

Working together: It was a beautiful thing -- Fraser standing straight and tall, giving Zundel a brief speech about land claims and Charter-rights, Ray tying up Latrobe with a long piece of sinew -- and this was how it would *always* be, if Ray got his way.

*

Using Latrobe's radio, Fraser called Patsy and they sat tight with assholes and the fireworks. Fraser still wouldn't let him set anything off, but Ray didn't exactly mind. Patsy dropped them off at the cabin and they circled around inside, moving like they were bruised, like they were hurt much worse than they were -- just a couple burns on Ray's fingertips and a bump on Fraser's head that was from the meat cellar, not the fight.

Ray took the doll from his pocket. Fraser was watching him, but secretly, like Ray was the surveillance subject. Freak.

"I like her," Ray said finally. "Creepy as fuck, but I like her."

Fraser took his time responding. "May I?" Fraser held out his cupped palm and Ray dropped the doll in it. Bringing it up to his face, stroking the doll's front, Fraser started to frown.

"What is it?"

"Oh, dear." Fraser poked the doll again and it rocked a little before falling on its back. Now it looked like a baby crying to be picked up.

"What?"

"Hmm," Fraser said. Ray huffed out a heavy sigh of annoyance and watched Fraser stroke down the doll's front with his index finger. Any minute now, he looked about to lick the thing.

Ray waved his hand. "Fraser. *Fraser*."

Finally, Fraser looked up. "Yes, Ray?"

"What?"

"What?"

Ray was the first to break the stand-off, because he couldn't bear to have Fraser doing the beady-eyed innocent thing on him. So he grinned and leaned forward, elbows planted on his knees. "What's wrong with the dollie? Besides the obvious, with the blood and the screamin' and she's got no hands."

Fraser kept looking at him. That was no innocent stare, Ray realized, it was a sad one, tilting-down eyelids and tight through the corners of his mouth, and it just about went right through Ray. Fraser said, like it was the most natural thing in the world, "I appear to have lost my heart, Ray."

"What?"

Fraser brought the doll in his palm between them, right under both their noses. He flicked his finger and the doll's overshirt-dress-anorak-*thing* flipped up to cover its face. "You see?" Fraser said, very quietly.

Ray squinted at the doll. He should have had his glasses on. but this close, maybe he didn't need them. The doll's tummy was rounded stone, smooth, like someone worked it good and long. Up towards the top, right where the dress folded over, there was a slit in the stone, little, no longer than Ray's fingernail. Little thicker, though.

"Yes," Fraser said. He was leaning so close, his breath was warm on Ray's forehead. "You see."

"I see nothing, Fraser."

"There was a red button in there," Fraser said anyway, like he knew better. Like he had Ray's eyes or something crazy like that. "Her heart. I seem to have --" He looked at Ray now, the sadness all over his face like Ray was seeing him from behind a rainy window, tracks of tears wavering across, impossible to touch. "--lost my heart."

"Fraser --" Ray stopped whatever he was going to say. They weren't talking about the doll any more. They were talking about Fraser. Fraser, and him, and the two of them. Reaching over, he curled Fraser's fingers gently over the doll and kept their hands clasped, pulling their hands down into the space between them. "You got a weird way of sayin' things --" Ray said and brought Fraser's hand up to his own chest, squeezing it.

"I've been told that, yes." Fraser wouldn't quite meet Ray's eyes and he spoke like he was talking to Turnbull, nothing in his voice except sound.

"Yeah. Weird. Also unhinged and possibly brain-damaged." Ray smiled, but Fraser still didn't. Just kept on looking at Ray, through Ray, rain and quivers and Ray's throat just about closed all the way up. "We ain't talking about the doll, are we?"

"I suppose --" Fraser cleared his throat. "That's up to you."

Ray squeezed Fraser's fist again and rocked it against his chest for emphasis. Just to be sure. "I got your heart, buddy."

That wasn't sadness Fraser was wearing now. That was a smile, wide and widening, so wide it'd blind anyone else. Anyone not Ray, who just leaned in and lapped it up and soaked it in and kissed Fraser like it was the first and the last time and all the times in between.

And then, because Ray liked to be thorough with feelings if not -- ever -- with his paperwork, he reached inside his shirt and yanked free the top button from his union suit.

"Here," Ray said, his lips thick from kissing, and unlocked Fraser's fist around the doll, laying the red button next to her. "Finish your creepy story."

*

Fraser opened his mouth.

Touching Fraser's lips with blistered fingers, Ray trusted him to find the words. Past language and well beyond landscape, Fraser inhaled slowly. He drew the warmth of Ray's touch inside himself and began again.


End file.
